Last night at First Flight Games in Barco, NC, we had a great Friday Night Magic that saw some very interesting decks piloted by some of our favorite people; our customers!!
The final match of four was a slug-fest fought out by two of our strongest local players, Ben and Kaitlyn. Ben was piloting a Black-Green deck which is extremely powerful. At it’s core it uses Winding Constrictor to maximize all the other key cards by allowing additional counters for all his creatures. Alongside this very sneaky snake is a team of cards that couldn’t synergize any more with each other than they already do. Walking Ballista, Verdurous Gearhulk and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar all work together to make each other lousy with counters. The star of the show is of course Walking Ballista. This card is the Tom Brady of the deck. It does everything you could want a card to do; counts as both an Artifact and a Creature in the yard for Delirium if you’re on that route, grows extra counters when curved into, off of Winding Constrictor, and it can remove those counters to deal damage to a target creature OR player! This card, Ben’s MVP, is such a powerful creature allowing him to shoot down Planeswalkers at instant speed, interrupting the “Copy Cat” combo and finishing off games behind attacking creatures; waiting for opponents to finish combat and then driving home the final points of damage for those capital G’s.
Although Ben’s deck was strong, he didn’t have an easy time in the finals, where he ran up against Kaitlyn’s really sweet home brewed list. A terminal Black-White player in most formats, Kaitlyn was at the helm of a Black-White tokens deck that, after watching her play, I’m surprised this isn’t a more prolific archetype in this format. The MVP of her deck last night was Hidden Stockpile and it served as the fulcrum of a relentless deluge of Servo token creatures that, JUST. WOULD. NOT. DIE! Double Hidden Stockpile in the absence of removal was the end of the game, you just might not have known it at the time. An extremely powerful card, it allowed her to keep her field supplied with chump blockers that she could sacrifice, before damage, and scry 1 for each, and then MAKE ANOTHER SERVO. An unsuspecting card by itself, in her deck it was an absolute killer that demanded an answer. With one Hidden Stockpile on the board, and sometimes two, Kaitlyn used Sram’s Expertise, Servo Exhibition, and Weaponcraft Enthusiast to overwhelm her opponent and take the win.
The final match saw these two decks battle it out over three games, both piloted with expertise. In the end; There can be only ONE! Ben and his Black-Green Snake deck came out on top last night but with appropriate sideboard considerations our next FNM looks to be a virtual minefield of explosive and surprising deck lists. All of our players played with great sportsmanship and had a great time all around. Hands were shook, GG’s were given and received and everyone laughed and sighed at times.
Some other deck of note were a really cool Aetherborn Tribal deck, Red-White Dwarves, Temur Energy and a Sultai Energy Evolution deck. Who and/or what will show up next week? Think you can solve our meta? Put your list together and bring in down to see how you stand up at First Flight Games.
See you soon!